When someone goes to the doctor and says, “I hear a voice in my head,” he or she will most likely be sent to a psychiatrist. The fact is that, in a very similar way, virtually everyone hears a voice, or several voices, in their head all the time: the involuntary thought processes that you don’t realize you have the power to stop. Continuous monologues or dialogues.

You have probably come across “mad” people in the street incessantly talking or muttering to themselves. Well, that’s not much different from what you and all other “normal” people do, except that you don’t do it out loud. The voice comments, speculates, judges, compares, complains, likes, dislikes, and so on. The voice isn’t necessarily relevant to the situation you find yourself in at the time; it may be reviving the recent or distant past or rehearsing or imagining possible future situations. Here it often imagines things going wrong and negative outcomes; this is called worry. Sometimes this soundtrack is accompanied by visual images or “mental movies.” Even if the voice is relevant to the situation at hand, it will interpret it in terms of the past. This is because the voice belongs to your conditioned mind, which is the result of all your past history as well as of the collective cultural mind-set you inherited. So you see and judge the present through the eyes of the past and get a totally distorted view of it. It is not uncommon for the voice to be a person’s own worst enemy. Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy. It is the cause of untold misery and unhappiness, as well as of disease.

The good news is that you can free yourself from your mind. This is the only true liberation. You can take the first step right now. Start listening to the voice in your head as often as you can. Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patterns, those old gramophone records that have been playing in your head perhaps for many years. This is what I mean by “watching the thinker,” which is another way of saying: listen to the voice in your head, be there as the witnessing presence.

When you listen to that voice, listen to it impartially. That is to say, do not judge. Do not judge or condemn what you hear, for doing so would mean that the same voice has come in again through the back door. You’ll soon realize: there is the voice, and here I am listening to it, watching it. This I am realization, this sense of your own presence, is not a thought. It arises from beyond the mind.

So when you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of yourself as the witness of the thought. A new dimension of consciousness has come in. As you listen to the thought, you feel a conscious presence — your deeper self— behind or underneath the thought, as it were. The thought then loses its power over you and quickly subsides, because you are no longer energizing the mind through identification with it. This is the beginning of the end of involuntary and compulsive thinking. When a thought subsides, you experience a discontinuity in the mental stream — a gap of “no-mind.” At first, the gaps will be short, a few seconds perhaps, but gradually they will become longer.

When these gaps occur, you feel a certain stillness and peace inside you. This is the beginning of your natural state of felt oneness with Being, which is usually obscured by the mind. With practice, the sense of stillness and peace will deepen. In fact, there is no end to its depth. You will also feel a subtle emanation of joy arising from deep within: the joy of Being. It is not a trancelike state. Not at all. There is no loss of consciousness here. The opposite is the case. If the price of peace were a lowering of your consciousness, and the price of stillness a lack of vitality and alertness, then they would not be worth having. In this state of inner connectedness, you are much more alert, more awake than in the mind-identified state. You are fully present. It also raises the vibrational frequency of the energy field that gives life to the physical body.

As you go more deeply into this realm of no-mind, as it is sometimes called in the East, you realize the state of pure consciousness. In that state, you feel your own presence with such intensity and such joy that all thinking, all emotions, your physical body, as well as the whole external world become relatively insignificant in comparison to it. And yet this is not a selfish but a selfless state. It takes you beyond what you previously thought of as “your self.” That presence is essentially you and at the same time inconceivably greater than you. What I am trying to convey here may sound paradoxical or even contradictory, but there is no other way that I can express it.

Ekhart Tolle – The power of now

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“One of the main discoveries of meditation is seeing how we continually run away from the present moment, how we avoid being here just as we are. That’s not considered to be a problem; the point is to see it.”

“Meditation is about seeing clearly the body that we have, the mind that we have, the domestic situation that we have, the job that we have, and the people who are in our lives. It’s about seeing how we react to all these things. It’s seeing our emotions and thoughts just as they are right now, in this very moment, in this very room, on this very seat. It’s about not trying to make them away, not trying to become better than we are, but just seeing clearly with precision and gentleness.”

“Our neurosis and our wisdom are made out of the same material. If you throw out your neurosis, you also throw out your wisdom. Someone who is very angry also has a lot of energy; that energy is what’s so juicy about him or her. That’s the reason people love that person. The idea isn’t to try to get rid of your anger but to make friends with it, to see it clearly with precision and honesty, and also to see it with gentleness. That means not judging yourself as a bad person, but also not bolstering yourself up by saying, ‘It’s good that I am this way. Other people are terrible, and I’m right to be so angry at them all the time.’ The gentleness involves not repressing the anger but also not acting it out. It is something much softer and more openhearted than any of that.”

“Rinpoche used to say, ‘Notice your tone of voice when you say “thinking.” It might be really harsh, but actually it’s just a euphemism for ‘Drat! You were thinking again, gosh darn it, you dummy.’ You might really be saying, ‘You fool, you absolutely miserable meditator, you’re hopeless.’ But it’s not that you’ve noticed. Good for you, you actually noticed! You’ve noticed that mind thinks continuously, and it’s wonderful that you’ve seen that. Having seen it, let the thoughts go. Say, ‘Thinking’. If you notice that you’re being harsh, say it a second time just to cultivate the feeling that you could say it to yourself with gentleness and kindness, in other words, that you are cultivating a nonjudgmental attitude. You are not criticizing yourself, you are just seeing what is with precision and gentleness, seeing thinking as thinking.”

See more in the book “The wisdom of no escape” by Pema Chödrön

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You are looking through the photos from a trip and you see for the first time something you hadn’t noticed when you were there. Sounds familiar? When you see something beautiful, your first reaction is to take a picture of it. If you spend the whole time taking pictures, however, it turns out that you have seen the place through the lens, not with your eyes.

Why is taking too many photos on a trip bad:

A recent study of the Fairfield University, Connecticut, suggests that taking too many photographs can, in fact, impair your ability to remember details of the trip later. A group of people were taken to a museum and asked to observe some of the works of art, and take photos of others. When asked on the next day, the participants were able to better remember details of the pieces they had observed. The study’s author, psychology professor Linda Henkel, calls it a “photo-taking impairment effect”. 

“When people rely on technology to remember for them – counting on the camera to record the event and thus not needing to attend to it fully themselves – it can have a negative impact on how well they remember their experiences”, professor Henkel explains. 

How to not do it:

This time forget that you have a camera and just enjoy your screen-less trip. Set aside several hours only for contemplating, listening, breathing… Create memories no one else will know about. They will be yours alone. If you insist on photos, ask someone in your group to take them instead.

What to do instead:

#1 Choose beautiful postcards and send them home. Send one to yourself too, describing to yourself how you are feeling. These details often pale with time.

#2 Sketch views that have impressed you in a notebook (like travel writer John Meadows does).

#3 If you are in Italy, it is the best place to learn how to practice the concept of “dolce far niente“. Literally, it means “sweet doing nothing”, but in fact, it means so much more than its literal translation, that you can practically call it an untranslatable phrase.

#4 Indulge in a mindfulness or meditation practice.

#5 Take this challenge to the next level by turning off all electronic devices for the whole trip. It’s good for your mental health, here’s why.

Like it? Pin it to remind yourself later:

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Meet locals: Global Greeter Network

Global Greeter Network is my favorite way to find a local guide to show you around for free and answer all the questions you might have about the place you’re visiting. The network now includes more than 150 cities all over the world, and it’s continually growing. Unlike many other similar services, Global Greeter Network is not tip-based; it’s completely free.

Meet locals: MeetUp

MeetUp is a platform where everyone can create or join a meeting in their current location. These are social events ranging from yoga classes to book clubs, mindfulness practices, outdoor sports and language exchanges. The events themselves can be free or paid, but don’t worry – this is specified in the meetup description. If you don’t find any meetup that suits you, just create your own!

Offline navigation: Google Maps

Since Google Maps released its offline version, travelers’ lives have changed forever. No longer do you need to use expensive data roaming to find your way in a foreign city! Of course, one of the main drawbacks of the app is that the downloadable files are huge (usually several hundred megabytes) and take up large chunks of your phone’s memory. You can find full instructions on how to download and use offline maps here.

Offline navigation: Maps.me

In some countries (Thailand for example), Google Maps doesn’t support offline navigation. That’s when you need to find a substitute, and the perfect substitute is Maps.me. This app requires way less phone storage space than Google Maps and has proven to be incredibly accurate (like that one time when it guided us through a secret passageway in a floating market – it was so well-hidden that we didn’t even realize we were supposed to buy tickets).

Meditation: Calm

Calm is a leading meditation app that offers enough free stuff to keep your spirituality high on the road. Choose from the list of meditation melodies, and download your favorites for those moments when (gasp!) you don’t have internet access. The app also features a few guided meditations, timed meditations and sleep stories. The handy calendar makes it easy for you to catch up if you miss a meditation session.

Find the cheapest flights, regardless of the dates and destinations: Kiwi

Sometimes you simply have a little extra cash and no preferences for where and when you want to go. Kiwi.com is the perfect tool for these situations – you can set your outgoing destination and dates (or not!), and Kiwi will find you the cheapest flights to anywhere in the world.

Find cheap flights and error fares: Secret Flying

Of all the error fare services I’ve tested, Secret Flying has proven to be one of the best. On its Facebook page, it posts flight deals and worldwide error fares several times a day. Just hit the “See first” option on Facebook to make sure you don’t miss a good deal. There’s also a search bar on the website, which allows you to search by destination or date.

>>> Read more: How to travel for free (without feeling like a tramp)

Pin it for free and return later, when you’re wondering “what was that website for meeting locals…?”:

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